New and seasoned Practice Managers and Physicians know that handling the day to day tasks of running a medical practice can be time consuming. Administrative tasks and responsibilities have increased with ever-changing government regulations, Medicare laws, and legal concerns. Efficiency appears to be a losing battle, and stressful workflows take a toll on delivering compassionate patient care. A paperless office was presented as a time and cost saving endeavor that would lead to better patient care. Or was it a trick?

Sound familiar?

A polished representative came to the office to demonstrate their EMR, Practice Management, and Medical Billing system. You were convinced, “this is the solution, what a relief, Ah…!” Thousands of dollars and countless hours spent on implementation and training. Finally, the “go live” date arrived. Then, reality hit; the staff forgot how to upload documents, the doctor was in the exam room trying unsuccessfully to view an MRI with the patient, and you frantically tried to fix the issues. The workflow stopped as panic took over. You finally phoned customer support and you were placed on hold. “Ugh,” you began to question…”How much longer will the learning curve actually take?” “Did I make the right system selection?” “Why did I try to improve efficiency?” “It really wasn’t that bad and where is that polished sales person now?”

Most of us have very full lives and find value in saving time by researching and purchasing almost everything on Amazon.com. Amazon is a cutting edge retailer that has mastered IT engineering and the customer experience.

Why does health care not provide a similar experience? It is rare to speak with a practice that is pleased with their present electronic workflow. Most claim that it slows them down and takes the personal relation away from the patient/clinician encounter. Perhaps, in the future, there is a way for Health Information Technology to follow the Amazon-inspired philosophy of delivering a seamless experience from point of contact to follow-up visit. Does your EMR, Practice Management, and Medical Billing system enhance the patient experience?

Emulating Amazon is no small feat. To learn more about “What Health Care Can Learn from Amazon,” attend a special webinar event hosted by athenaHealth on Wednesday, March 19th, at 12:15 PM EST.

Application Programming Interfaces are up for discussion today, is this the future of interoperability with medical records? Anyone in the HIT/EHR business today can pretty much attest to the complexities that have evolved and is there anything or anyone to fault? Not really it is just the way it happened. Continue reading: Is HIT Interoperability in the Nature of Healthcare?

Today we are featuring an opinion piece written by Edmund Billings, MD, CFO of Medsphere. The company has been in business since 2002. The company markets an EMR that was converted from VistA to OpenVista. They took the original system from the Veteran’s Administration and created a commercial version of the software suitable for use outside the VA. Here’s a short description of what they do followed by his article about the the high costs of Healthcare IT systems today. Continue reading: A Tale of Two Studies: What are the actual costs of an EHR?